For the Italian-Scottish actor, his role in Mikko Mäkelä’s sweaty, sexy, and seminal queer Drama Sebastian, out today in UK cinemas, was a journey to self-discovery.
25-year-old Ruaridh Mollica is damn good at making pasta. His first pick? “There’s a pasta dish from home in Tuscany called ‘Tortelli di patate’, I’ve grown up eating it and it’s my favourite ever,” he shares. “It’s literally Tortelli filled with mashed potato.” But it isn’t his proclivity for a double dose of carbs that landed the Italian-Scottish actor his fearless debut in writer-director Mikko Mäkelä’s sweaty, sexy, and seminal queer Drama Sebastian; that was all down to his impressive acting chops.
After his agent suggested the project, and a powerful self-tape landed him the role of Max—an ambitious young novelist who moonlights as a sex worker under the name Sebastian to research for his debut novel—Ruaridh got to work flexing his leading-man muscle for the first time. “Me and [Mikko] would spend hours and hours every week combing through the script line by line, talking about character intentions, drives, feelings, relationships at every moment,” he recalls, enthusiastically.
The dedication to detail was paramount. Appearing in practically every single frame of the film—from gut-punching sex scenes to tear-jerking self-revelations—Ruaridh delivers an ambitious performance, rife with raw vulnerability and simmering defiance that brought critics to their knees at 2024’s Sundance Film Festival and earned him a well-deserved BIFA nomination for Breakthrough Performance.
“That project totally changed my life and resonated with me on a lot of levels,” the actor reflects, buzz-cut growing out, with a razor-sharp jawline. He’s a cross between Beach Rat’s Harris Dickinson and a young Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting (fittingly, the latter project was filmed in the port town near Edinburgh where he grew up) in looks, as well as on-screen execution. “I’m a big reader, and the character was obsessed with many classic and queer authors that I was also obsessed with,” he continues, citing Bret Easton Ellis, Philip Roth andJean Paul Sartre as particular favourites. “I’d also just moved to the big city of London and resonated with the solitude and search for meaning and identity that one can feel in these places.”
So while Max—under the guise of Sebastian—was on a nail-biting journey to self-acceptance as a sex worker on-screen, Ruaridh was boldly embracing his own process of personal awakening. “I developed more body confidence and power within myself,” he shares of the eye-opening experience. “I felt very seenin ways I hadn’t before, and it gave me strength to come out as bisexual and accept my queerness.”
Proving himself as someone who isn’t afraid to push boundaries with daring character choices, including an upcoming role in the queer Drama JOE based on the lust-drenched novel The Whale Tattoo, Ruaridh is carving out a space for himself as Indie film’s next poster-boy. “And as for the rest of 2025, we’ll have to wait and see,” he says coyly. But something tells us we won’t have to wait too long.
Sebastian is now available in cinemas in the UK and Ireland.
Photography by Alex Rorison
Styling by Abigail Hazard
Words by Ella Bardsley
Grooming by Zoe Rubin at Creatives Agency
Set Design by Celina Bassili
Set Design Assistant Ellen Sussams
Photography Assistant Aaron Paul Walker
Fashion Assistants Andrea Marti, Olivia Caldwell